Y13 BTEC Performing Arts - Caitlin Nicholas

For the performance of this piece I have formed a monologue from the graphic, horrendous yet tender speeches of the Soldier: ----------------------------- I have. Col. Fucking beautiful. Close my eyes and think about her. She’s –  She’s –  She’s – She’s – She’s dead, see. Fucking bastard soldier, he – They buggered her. Cut her throat. Hacked her ears and nose off, nailed them to the front door. You don't know fuck all about me. I went to school. I made love with Col. Bastards killed her, now I’m here. Now I’m here. You never fucked by a man before? Didn't think so. It’s nothing. Saw thousands of people packing into trucks like pigs trying to leave town. Women threw their babies on board hoping someone would look after them. Crushing each other to death. Insides of people’s heads came out of their eyes. Saw a child most of his face blown off, young girl I fucked hand up inside her trying to claw my liquid out, starving man eating h...

In the preface of the script, Timberlake Wertenbaker writes: 'As I write this, many Education Departments of prisons are being cut - theatre comes under the Education Department - and the idea of tough punishment as justice seems to be gaining ground in our increasingly harsh society.' This shows the truly political motive behind the play, she is using the Brechtian technique of basing the play in the past to distance the audience and force them to reflect on their own current society. This makes the aim for our scene very clear: to show a 'harsh society' in which authoritative figures of high class view 'tough punishment as justice. I think this is idea is especially important in regards to the character I play: Major Robbie Ross. Our Country's Good is based on the real story of the First Fleet in the 1780's, in which royal marines and convicts were sent to Australia to form the first penal colony. Most of the characters are also based on real people...

Sarah Kane was a young, very controversial English contemporary playwright and poet during 1990's. Her works revolve around themes of love, torture, sex and death and are well-known for including very graphic on-stage torture and violence. Her work has been labelled with the term 'In-yer-face theatre' by the critic Aleks Sierz, this type of theatre includes the works of Anthony Neilson and Mark Ravenhill. In her short lifetime she wrote five plays (Blasted, Phaedra's Love, Cleansed, Crave, 4.48 Psychosis)  and one short film (Skin).  Kane struggled with severe depression towards the end of her life and eventually killed herself in 1999. This affected her life and her writing in an extreme way, her fellow playwright and friend Mark Ravenhill described in her obituary that 'Kane fell out of love with life. And so began great, harrowing cycles of depression, self-hate and hospitalisation.'  In terms of her inspirations and motives, Kane was deeply affected by ...

Before we continued work on Our Country's Good, we looked into the Brechtian idea of gestus. Our teacher asked us how we would show -using props, set, costume, proxemics, characterisation and gesture- a political piece of theatre about the slave trade in the style of Brecht. The aim would be for the audience to understand the themes of the play and the key messages of the play by simply seeing a photograph of the action. Below is a quick brainstorm of our ideas: We were then asked to look at the following images and decide whether they were taken from Brecht pieces of theatre or not, we quickly came to the conclusion that they were in fact all from Brecht's plays. The use of song and stereotyped characters  are  key components of Brecht's work. The visible, believe and subtle emotion in this picture made us question whether it was from  a Brechtian play but we were reminded that Brecht wasn't opposed to emotion but simply wanted the overa...

After learning the basics of Brecht's genre of Epic Theatre, we looked at an extract of his play Mother Courage and Her Children. We were asked to identify aspects of Brecht's style within the extract that we could see just by skimming through the scene, we found: Placards - the contents of them shown at the beginning of the scene, outlining what happens in the scene, used to distance the audience, make them aware of the theatrical nature of the play and to remove suspense Song - used in the middle of the scene to comment on the themes in the play Generic names - all characters (except from Mother Courage and her children Kattrin, Eilif and Swiss Cheese) have names that simply define their roles in the play and the wider society e.g. Cook, Sergeant, Peasant  Gestus - Mother Courage always wears a money pouch that makes a noise when she walks, constantly reminding the audience of her character and what her character represents Large narrative - we noticed in the stage...

Bertolt Brecht was a German Theatre Practitioner and Playwright. He wrote between the 1920's and the 1950's. He lived in Munich during the Weimar Republic, moved to Scandinavia and then the US during the Nazi period and WW2 before returning to East Berlin after the war. Therefore, he lived in a very politically turbulent time which in doubt inspired his theatre.  Brecht is well known for his ground  breaking, avant-garde approach to contemporary theatre shown in the genre of Epic Theatre . Epic Theatre presents the idea that an audience must see, criticise and connect with the wider political context of the play rather than identifying and connecting emotionally with the characters and the plot. He thought it to be very important that the audience (or spectators as he liked to call them) be aware that the play is a representation of reality and not reality itself by highlighting the manufactured theatrical nature of the play. He employed many different tec...